JD's Beaters! OR, as some have (graciously, IMHO) called them, "Art Cars."
(to see real artcars, check out - surprise - www.artcars.com )
Special greetings to my fellow "www.beaterz.com" fans. :) Soon as I found that site, I knew I'd have to get myself on it. Even tho these cars were a couple years back, thanks Beaterboy for giving me the link. :)
OH, I know what you're wondering....WHY? WHY would anyone do this to a car? WHY would anyone be seen in public?
Well, if you have to ask....you won't understand. I don't quite know myself. Partly, I never outgrew wanting to be the center of attention. Partly, I enjoy messing with people's preconcieved notion that, for some reason, a car has to be a "car" and you can't do stupid things to them. And partly just because it was hiliarous and I am an incorrigable wiseass.
Let me explain...back in 1994 I worked as a Domino's Pizza delivery driver. Now, before you make fun of me, I can tell you that I made almost as much money at that as at my "professional" job as a Learning/Development Facilitator at VoiceStream Wireless. Tax free money, I might add. OK, so there was no future, it was fun while it lasted, y'know?
Anyway, at the time I was driving a Mercury Lynx XR3 (Ford Escort GT, basically) that had some issues, such as stalling constantly for no apparent reason. Time is money to a pizza guy, of course, so that wasn't gonna work.
I bought a really SWEET 1989 Ford Probe GT that I did not want to "ruin" by using it to deliver in, which admittedly is hard on a car.
So, I started buying a succession of el-cheapo beater cars just to get around. That was one of the smartest (and most fun) decisions I ever made.
Basically, the cars were the cheapest, dirtiest, rustiest crap heaps I could find that were road-safe. (Notice I did not say road-legal...ahem) I never screwed around with safety, at least in my own twisted view...you'll understand what I mean as I go on. But I always made sure I had good brakes, tires, and lights, so I was never a major danger to myself or others on the road....
Since these cars looked like hell anyway, I decided to have some fun with them:
This was the '81 Mazda GLC I paid $50 for. I drove it over 16000 miles. (Remember, pizza guys get paid by the mile as well as tips...)
The Mazda also had another stupid modification I put in - a for-real, no bullshit, flip-a-switch-and-cloud-the-whole-block "smoke screen."
It was simple really, I just scrounged an old windowwasher pump & tank from one of my junkyard trips, and kept it filled with Automatic Transmission Fluid. I routed the tube from the pump to point down into the carbeurator, and wired up the switch inside the car.
Flip the switch, and the washer motor would pump ATF directly into the carb. ATF, when burned in your motor, comes out the tailpipe as THICK, pure white smoke.
I learned this trick from my old gas station boss Ben Fremstad, who swore by it for cleaning built up carbon deposits on valves and pistons. This is an old "shade tree mechanic" trick, you just dump a little ATF down your carb, it binds with and burns off the carbon, and your motor runs better. This is NOT advisable on modern fuel injected cars!! And massive quantities poured into the carb while driving down the road at 45 MPH isn't a good idea anyway, but it was a $50 car, remember? What did I care if I cracked the cylinder head... (but I never did...car went to the junkyard running smoothly, but more on that later)
I had a hell of a lot of fun with THAT little mod...especially when tailgated by obnoxious Mercedes and BMW drivers. (oh, much the better if it was a convertible...)
This was the '80 Dodge Omni I paid $180 for. I drove it over 30000 miles, though that's approximated, because the speedometer broke the week I bought the car... This picture was taken soon after I painted it...after I'd had it awhile, I hit on a new theme, and I started letting people write little slogans, draw pictures, whatever all over the car with a black "paint marker." By the time it was dead, it was COVERED with graffiti...
You may recognize the style? If you are thinking, "The Partridge Family Bus!" you are 95% correct. In fact, and I didn't know this myself until I did a little research, the Partridge Family did not "invent" this style. This is a ripoff of Piet Modrian, a Dutch painter from the 20's who did several paintings in this style, with the primary colors, black lines, and white space. The hood of the Omni, though not too clear in this photo, is a direct copy of Mondrian "Number Five." (Told ya I did my research)
I actually must give credit to an ex-girlfriend for this whole thing, though she was horrified at the time (and if she ever sees this page, will doubltess be horrified again) as she was the one who came up with it. Basically, my brother and I were sitting around the house one day, trying to think of stupid designs for the car (some rejected designs were checkerboard pattern, doorknobs bolted all over the car, concentric circles, murals [ruled out as I actually have no artistic talent] diamonds, etc...) Michelle, the ex in question, blurted out, "What about that Partridge Family thing?" That was all it took...
Quick and Dirty History of JD's Beaters
This won't be anywhere near as detailed as my Automotive History page, but a quick rundown on my beaters:
Beater #1 -'81 Mazda GLC. Drove it for 16000 miles, and never did a single repair to the car. Bought four brand new tires for $19/each (those little 155/80/13's are cheap!) and put gas and oil in it, that was all. (er, and a couple dozen quarts of ATF down the carb... ;)
I got this car cheap, $50, because it was not street legal. Had a large rust-hole in the floor under the passenger footwell. This is not legal due to the fear of exhaust gas coming into the car, but I did repair the hole with some bondo and riveted sheet metal - not good enough to be legal, but good enough to be safe, IMHO. Luckily of course, I knew "a guy" who'd be happy to sell you an inspection sticker for any car for $25....
The Mazda eventually developed a major transmission fluid leak, so I drove it to the junkyard and GAVE it to them. Engine was still running strong...
Beater #2 -'82 Datsun 200SX. I paid $200 for this one. This was actually the worst deal, and even so, I calculated out that it EARNED me over $3500 before I had to trash it after only 6000 miles. When it was new, this car was like freakin' Night Rider, I'm sure. Tons of little lightup gizmos on the dashboard, a little trip computer thing, etc. However most of that crap was long since broken by the time I got it, and in the manner of all Japanese cars from the '80's, this one had some bad rust rot as well, this time some rust holes in the rear seat footwells. These I also patched with Bondo and sheet metal, but here I admit I was foolish. I didn't understand the extent of the frame rust on this one, and one day while delivering pizza, as I was pulling back into the store parking lot, as I pulled the parking brake while rolling slightly, the torque/flex of the rear end TORE THE REAR END RIGHT OFF THE CAR. Yep, on the driver's side, where the rear end bolted up to the frame, the bolts pulled right out of the rusted frame metal and the rear end dropped back about a foot.
Hilarious, but sobering at the same time...had that happened while driving, that could have been serious trouble. At this point I decided, no more rusty frames...
Had that one hauled off to the junkyard, I think they gave me $25 for it. This one was also running strong, in fact, REALLY strong. About a week after I bought the car, while topping off the window washer resevoir (with window washer fluid, not ATF... ;) I spilled a bunch of washer fluid all over the hot, running motor. That cracked the cylinder head right at the exhaust port...but it didn't bother the engine one bit. It had a wicked compression leak at that spot from that point onward, driving it all you heard was "POP POP POP POP POP" from under the hood, and in the dark you could even see the blue flame leaking out the head when that cylinder fired...but it still ran like heck and was even pretty fast. The car had a very modern engine for it's time, a straight-four with dual spark plugs... I never got around to painting this one, sadly...didn't have it long enough.
Beater #3 - '80 Dodge Omni. I paid $180 for this car and it was by far the best, even better than the Mazda. I don't know for sure how far I drove it as the speedometer broke the week I got it. This one was the perfect beater - American steel, so not a bit of rust even at 17 years old and horribly maintained, BUT it had a Volkswagon motor (German engineering!) that simply would NOT quit. It was a funny car, it was the super-super economy model, a 1.7L 4-cyl with NO OPTIONs except a heater. That was it. No radio, not even a VENT fan, just a floor heater. No center console at all, the shifter just stuck up out of the floor with a 2' long shift handle....hilarious.
Soon after I painted it, I cut all the gaskets out of the back window, so on hot days, I could lift the back window out of the car and leave it in the garage. I made a little system of clamps and wingnuts to hold it in the rest of the time. :) That worked great until one day I dropped the window taking it outta the car (hey, they're a lot heavier than you think! :) So I went to Home Depot and bought a big piece of Plexiglass, cut it to the approximate size, and put that across the back....
This one I drove right up 'till I quit the pizza business, it was such a good beater. I did have a semi-major problem with it, though, at one point I bottomed out the car and hit so hard I snapped the lower motor mount. The engine dropped and twisted in the engine compartment, which put WAAAY too much stress on the driveshafts (the CV joint was bent FAR more than it was designed to!) and the CV joint just exploded. Peices of bearing flew everywhere...
A pizza guy needs his wheels, so while I was fixing the Omni (took about 3 weeks, there were VERY few of those made with that weird motor so it was hard to find one in a junkyard...) I bought Beater #4, the Datsun 210.
Let me finish the Omni story though...after I repaired it and sold off the Datsun, I drove it for another 10000 miles or so, even after I quit the pizza biz. By this time, the car really was a wreck. BOTH door handles were broken off outside, which meant I had to keep one window rolled down at all times so I could reach thru and open the door. (there was never ANYTHING worth stealing in that wreck) The front wheel bearings were badly worn and the front wheels had a distinct "wobble" to them. The muffler or catalytic converter (never figured out which) got horribly clogged, but that wasn't a problem because there were so many holes in the exhaust all the exhaust leaked out without any major problems...(good thing I always had the windows rolled down, though) BUT, as always, the tires and brakes were fine. I wasn't suicidal, just cheap...
Eventually, when it became clear I just didn't need it anymore, my brother and I drained the oil out of the motor, poured a bunch of BB's down the carb and into the crankcase, drained the coolant, and then we drove the car around the block at full throttle, thinking the motor would seize up after a minute or two.
Au contraire! The old Omni really did me proud....we drove that thing, wide open throttle, for about 10 minutes before it finally gave up, and it didn't even really seize up, what actually happened (I think) was the BB's jammed into the valves and jammed some of them open so there was no more compression. I am pretty sure that's what happened because when it finally "died" it would still crank, just not start. It was either that or we broke the driveshaft, I didn't care enough to drop the oil pan to find out...
Beater #4 - '80 Datsun 210. I paid $150 for this car, just to drive "temporarily" while I fixed the Omni. This car...whew. The reason it was so cheap, is it was FILTHY. I don't mean just dirty...I mean, whatever f'ing slob had this car seemed to go out of his way to DESTROY it. There was so much black dirt and filth encrusted on the steering wheel, dashboard, shifter, etc. I didn't want to touch anything when I drove it from the horribly low-rent car dealer I bought it from. The seats were disgusting, torn to bits and smelly. Someone had left a quart of MILK half full and spilled all over the rear seats. You cannot IMAGINE the stench.
Ahhh....but that was always my secret. How do you think I bought $150 cars, drove them hard, didn't maintain them, but never had serious issues? Because I was willing to drive the car that RAN GOOD, but nobody in their right mind would touch.
It wasn't bad at all really. I bought it on a Friday in the summertime, right before I was going away for a week's vacation. I actually took a couple of trash bags to the dealership and used those to cover the seats (I wasn't sitting in that filth!) I wore cheap rubber gloves, and the FIRST PLACE I drove it was to one of those "do it yourself" car washes with the super high pressure sprays.
I pulled the car into the wash bay, got a couple bucks worth of quarters. I rolled down all the windows, opened the doors, used the trash bags to cover the ignition switch and to ram up under the dashboard to keep it dry, and then I SPRAYED THE LIVING HELL out of the inside of the car with the high pressure soap sprayer.
I did that for about 10 minutes...4 sets of $1.50 in quarters. I just sprayed every single inch of that car with the high pressure, over and over...I soaked the hell out of the seats, the carpets, the console, the steering wheel, the interior roof, the hatchback, everything. The water that came out of the seats/carpet was BLACK at first, but after 10 minutes, it was all crystal clean and smelled fine.
I drove it home (sat on the trash bags again, to keep dry this time) and there I soaked the seats and carpet with "Sanitizer Solution" we used at Domino's - you mixed a half-cup with 4 gallons of water to sanitize the dishes/pots with. Well, I used about a gallon of the sanitizer with about 2 gallons of water and soaked all the fabrics with that. I propped open the doors/windows/hatchback, left it out in the sun (asked my brother to close it up if it rained, but it didn't all week) and when I came home - car was clean inside and out, smelled very nice (sanitizer had a nice fresh smell) and that was that.
I drove the car for about 3000 miles, and when the Omni was back on the road, I sold the Datsun to a friend-of-a-friend for $300. He drove it for a whole winter (he had motorcycles to drive in the summer) and later traded it in on a new truck, I think he told me he got $500 or $1000 trade in for it, so everyone was happy all around....
There you have it...the story of all my horrible beater cars. Damn, they were fun! I so miss those days...
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